Steriod era players? I'd elected them, and here's why.

Okay, I know it’s been a really long time since I last blogged, but sharing something as personal as I did takes a lot out of you. And one needs to find the proper follow up, and I have, and it just might piss a few folks off. Or it could very well educate them.

 I have, what I feel, is an irrefutable argument as to why players with confirmed ties, or alleged ties to steroids and PED’s belong in the baseball hall of fame. Now I know what you are saying. These players cheated, they took drugs to give themselves an edge. The impaired the sanctity of the game, its forever tainted. These sins, they can never be enshrined into the Hall.

Well, let’s not act like the baseball hall of fame is a place for angels, okay. In fact, there are several members who while they may have not taken drugs to give themselves an edge, they have done things much worse, including two men who committed a crime  so atorusous, that if the general public knew of their crimes, they would hold protest in Cooperstown demanding they be expunged from the hall of fame.  But before we get to them, let’s take a look at some of the other folks that are in the hall, even though they weren’t exactly upstanding citizens.

Ty Cobb, let’s take a look at him. Yes, I’ll concede that he used his wealth to help the disadvantaged, and maybe Ty was bi-polar. How else could you explain a person who later in life was so kind, you during his playing days, was a walking, talking iceberg. Cobb did beat the hell out of a black elevator operator because the man allegedly talks to Cobb in an “Uppity” manner.  And when the security guard, who was also black, tried to pull Cobb off the man, Cobb repaid him with a stab to the gut. The case was later settled out of court. And there were stories of Cobb also being abusive towards women as well. Despite being pretty much a prick off the field, Cobb was a star on the field, and his off field exploits were overlooked.

 Charles Comiskey, the man who set the standard for tightwad owner. He managed his payroll to the point that he would often order that players be sat so they wouldn’t reach certain performance bonuses, or he’d simply cheap out in other areas. And it was this that led to the revolt that would be the basis for members of the White Sox to throw the 1919 World Series.

However, those men are small potatoes compared to two men who should be expunged from the hall, should major league baseball really care about the sacredness of the hall. And if sports writers really cared, they’d pitch a fit that these men are even in the hall to begin with.

Let’s look first at Kennesaw Mountain Landis. The man who threw out the dirty Black Sox players who threw the 1919 World Series, who was going to remove the gambling element out of the game. See, when Landis was a sitting Chicago judge, he had a slight (cue sarcasm) reputation for giving white criminals  softer sentences, while imposing extremely harsh ones on those who weren’t Anglo-Saxon. And he didn’t really care if a person had a disease and wouldn’t see the end of their sentence, Landis once told an elderly man who posed his concern that “You sure can go ahead and try.”  The only reason he was appointed as commissioner of major league baseball was payback. Years before, he ruled in favor of the American and National League in their case against the Federal League, an outlaw circuit that raided the rosters of both leagues, in an attempt to become the third “Major Baseball League”

But Landis was also the man who fought tooth and nail to keep baseball a “White’s Only” game, following his belief with such thoughts are “They have their league, and we have ours” and “The best Negro boy can’t compete on the same level as the worst white ball player.”  It’s no coincidence that Jackie Robinson didn’t make his debut until after Landis was dead and buried. And for keeping the game segregated, Landis was rewarded with a special election to the baseball hall of fame. Yeah, you read that right, Landis was rewarded for keeping blacks out of the major leagues by election to the hall of fame. And I’m sure his ruling on the Black Sox scandal, and in the Federal League case played a role, but hey, we can’t forget, this fought to keep baseball a white’s only game. As I write this, I am reminded of a famous story in which Brooklyn had been scouting Josh Gibson, a power hitting catcher often called “The Black Babe Ruth”. Brooklyn was threatened with expulsion from the major leagues if Negro league scouting continued.

Now we come to the mastermind behind keeping baseball a “White’s” only game. Elected in 1939, we have the worst offender in the major league baseball hall of fame. A man that has now, and had then, clear ties to the KKK. Former Chicago Cubs First  baseman Cap Anson. Now to tell the story, we travel back to the 1880’s, when the Anson’s team was set to play Toledo of the American Association. The AA was the second major league at the time, and it actually allowed integration of the rosters. When Anson learned that Toledo had a catcher named Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was black, Anson took his team off the field, and refused to play. He had been successful doing a stunt like this, years before, and the Toledo manager wasn’t going to have it. Whereas Anson stated under “No circumstances” he’d share a ball field with an n-word, he would relent, mainly because he was threatened with no payment. The game went on, and both Anson and Walker played, even though Anson would call Walker names like “Monkey” other insults, many that are way too vulgar to print here.

In 1894, Anson, tired of seeing white ball players lose jobs to black ball players, started his own revolution, called the “White Players revolt”. It was a general strike, in which Anson and some of the era’s top stars (and gate draws) would refuse to play ball as long as blacks were allowed to play alongside whites. The owners, not wanting to lose many, caved, and thus, major league baseball was no longer integrated, and would remain as such until after World War II.

Now I get the argument that some of you might want to make, that these folks, their transgression occurred off the field, and not on. They didn’t take drugs, etc. Well, that’s a nice argument, for about five minutes. Then you introduce logic, and you see the flaws of the argument. If you are going to argue that taking drugs to have an edge is a lower crime than that of racism, then I pity you. I don’t want to hear any discussion about protecting the legacy of the hall. The undisputable fact remains that while players who took drugs to get an edge, but ones who out and out engaged in racist acts are allowed in is flat out disgusting. So, unless you can sit there, and come up with a valid argument that taking drugs is worse than racism, I will not back off my view point.  

 If I could vote, I’d vote Roger Clemmons, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire all into the hall of fame. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with cheating to get an advantage, but in the grand scheme of things, what they did really wasn’t wrong. Mike Schimdt is one of the very few hall of famers who has no issue with these players getting in. He even admitted that players in the 70’s and 80’s often would take uppers for a game. As Schimdt has so wisely stated, Uppers enhanced the player’s game, so shouldn’t uppers be considered a PED? And if so, that would exclude a whole slew of players.

As I wind this up, I’m just going to restate my main point. I don’t want to hear about that sanctity of the major league baseball hall of fame. I don’t want to hear how electing players with ties to steroids and PED’s is going to taint it. Especially as long as the hall continues to house a certain two men who fought to keep baseball a game for whites only.